If you work on AdWords, probably not. We tend to work on the UI or in Editor and too often we miss the forest for the trees. Go on, do a search for a competitive product like ‘car insurance’ or ‘cheap flights.’ Notice anything different? None of your keywords are bolded in the headline anymore. If only Renée’s look had changed so inconspicuously. Google quietly removed bolding a couple of weeks back and initial relative CTR metrics across all accounts that we manage indicate that this isn’t a minor change and if you don’t act now, you’re in for some heartache shortly. With the holidays fast approaching, addressing this now could mean your best holiday season ever. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, Google released a much needed tracking feature in AdWords. Website Call Conversions. We’ve been playing with it in beta for quite some time and I’m surprised that it didn’t get much fanfare. Google effectively destroyed the AdWords call tracking industry. We have clients who, overnight, saved thousands of dollars/euros a day in call tracking fees. If you speak to your customers by phone at any stage of the buying cycle, you need this. This is not AdWords call extensions (although they are required, see below) or click to call; this is actual call tracking. So how does it work? Easy. Wherever your phone number appears on your website, Google will display that phone number as normal. However, if that visitor came from AdWords, Google will replace that number with a custom number that it ties to the visitor (and keyword/ad combination). Google then forwards that number on to your regular number. So how do we set this up? Surprisingly, there has been a lot of confusion over this. In this article, I’ll go through each step and then show you how to implement this manually or by using Google Tag Manager (because who’s not using GTM these days?). Read the rest of this entry »

You’re Product Listing Ads are getting upgraded to Google Shopping whether you like it or not. This really is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a great thing. As many of you who run PLAs know (Sorry Irish readers, so soup for you!), the deadline to upgrade your PLA campaigns is looming. If you don’t upgrade yourself, you’ll be forcefully upgraded at the end of the month. I cannot recommend manually upgrading enough. It should only take a few minutes. In this article, I’ll cut through all the fluff and explain only what you need to know to upgrade successfully. Alternatively, jump the end and let us do it for you for free!

This article should take you no more than 4 minutes to skim through & you’ll know all you need to about the migration. Anything not essential, I’ll leave out. I’ll also outline the quickest way to upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »

With the introduction of Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics in Google Analytics this year, having even rudimental ecommerce tracking set up in GA is now essential. It still surprises me how many Google Analytics accounts that we start work on that don’t even track their own revenue or some sort of return on their ad spend. So many GA users simply use GA as a “hit counter” and not the powerful free insight generator that it is. It’s absolutely vital to attribute monetary value to each of your traffic sources so you can see exactly what digital marketing channels are generating revenue and how much exactly. All sorts of additional insights and ideas can be generated from this core set of data. Google have of course gone one step further in making this easier with the availability of the free Google Tag Manager tool. In this article, I’ll show you how to implement Google Analytics standard ecommerce tracking using Google’s free Google Tag Manager tool.

One of the benefits of being an AdWords Top Contributor is that we get invited to big events like I/O without having to enter the lottery. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it this year due to a combination of workload and injury. Fortunately, there have been many neat advances in live streaming technology in the past few years with Google at the forefront of that technology. You can now watch the live stream of the Google I/O keynote and subsequent events below. I’ve also included a schedule and timetable for those who don’t have a whole two days to watch every minute. What do you hope is revealed this year? For me, I’m hoping that we get some extended Android widget functionality and some greater API access. Keynote starts at 5pm GMT.

The most time intensive and tedious task when using Google AdWords is creating your keyword lists for new ad campaigns. Not only can it take hours putting together your keywords lists, on top of that you have to make sure to include as many variations and misspellings of each word that you can think of and at the same time make sure not to have duplicate keywords or characters.

So many clients tell us that they don’t know what to write on their company blog or that their topics are boring and will not attract links. Matt Cutts put it nicely at a talk I attended at Google in Dublin last year that “Everybody in this room knows something or knows how to do something that nobody else does. Everybody in this room knows something that someone else WANTS to know”. The problem is, how do you find out what that “something” is and how can you tell in advance what the pay off for answering that question will be?

Not only is there an easy answer to that question, with a little bit of savvy, you can also be sure that your time isn’t wasted and that the content you create will almost certainly convert into a new lead or sale. In this blog post, I will outline a method of generating content that will involve a bit of practice to get right, but once mastered, you’ll never run out of content ideas again. Seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you need to improve your AdWords Quality Score? Do you want to understand what Google wants from you as an advertiser in exchange for a decent Quality Score and lower click prices? Today I will teach you the ins and outs of the algorithm and show you how you can tweak your account and site to influence each Quality Score factor.

*Update: I have been contacted by a source inside Google and updated two points in the post accordingly*

I am constantly surprised at how little advertisers really understand Quality Scores. If you put in a little effort, you can reap some very tangible benefits and come out leaps and bounds ahead of your competition.Read the rest of this entry »

Google recently sent out promotional coupon codes to all of its Google Analytics users for use in AdWords, as a way to encourage website owners to try out AdWords.

Often third parties such as web hosting companies or other online businesses will offer similar coupon codes (often these will come with their own set of terms of conditions, so please read the small print). Read the rest of this entry »

Many website owners install Google Analytics in an attempt to gauge the success or failure of their online ventures. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the data available, and to ignore the truly valuable statistics and the relationships between them. It is also very easy to focus too heavily on metrics such as unique visitors or traffic sources alone. Often what we should be really looking at is ways of improving our websites rather than how to drive more traffic to them.

Luckily there is an easy way to use Google Analytics to delve inside the behaviour of your website visitors, which in turn can help us improve our webpages. Whether you consider your website a success or not, most sites can be improved upon in one way or another, either from a usability perspective, achieving higher conversions, or with regards to the goals set for each of your pages. Read the rest of this entry »